ducks unlimited, South Dakota

Climate Change Challenge: human responses

Grant Award: $174,900; Year Awarded: 2015

With high densities of wetlands embedded within abundant grasslands, this critical breeding habitat annually produces greater than 60% of the continent’s waterfowl, and provides habitat to hundreds of other species including migratory birds and local wildlife. Wetland habitat is being lost to increasingly ideal conditions for row cropping created by climate changes and the subsequent influx of row crop farmland encroaching in the project area. This project will restore degraded habitat in targeted areas of eastern South Dakota to complement and enhance natural habitats, providing connectivity and refuge to wetland dependent migratory and local species adapting to a changing climate.